ICYMI: Chancellor Matos Rodríguez, TheDream.US Co-Founder Donald E. Graham Call on Congress to Provide a Path to Citizenship for Student Dreamers

Today marks 10 years since President Obama signed the executive order creating Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). To reflect on this anniversary and what more can be done to support undocumented students, Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez co-authored an op-ed in the New York Daily News with Graham Holdings Company Chairman Donald E. Graham, co-founder of TheDream.US scholarship. The column can be found here. The complete text is included below.

DACA and the distance still to go for Dreamers

By Félix V. Matos Rodríguez and Donald E. Graham

It's been exactly a decade since President Obama, at the urging of undocumented students, signed an executive order creating DACA - Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. DACA allowed young people raised in America, known as Dreamers, to secure an education and legal jobs despite their immigration status. It turned out to be a masterpiece of policymaking. It is a challenge to name a federal program that has accomplished so much at so little cost.

The program is still working wonders for the 600,000 people currently enrolled in it, but no one else can apply for the program because of various court fights and congressional inaction, meaning most undocumented students graduating from U.S. high schools this year and many graduating from college cannot work legally.

At the City University of New York, this includes some nurses or trained teachers who just graduated yet can't work in New York's desperately understaffed hospitals and public schools. In some cases, these may be local schools where they were educated.

Most Americans side with the Dreamers - those students who came to the U.S. as young children with their undocumented parents in search of a better life. The most recent Pew survey says that 74% of Americans favor giving Dreamers permanent legal status. Still, cruelly, among high-school students, only Dreamers cannot access federal aid for college. That means no federal Pell grants or even loans - and in most states, no state aid either. (Fortunately, New York State is a notable exception to this rule, and allows Dreamers access to state funds.)

The Obama administration created the DACA program in 2012 by ordering the Department of Homeland Security - after Congress failed to take action - to create a special legal status for young people raised in this country. To enroll in the program, recipients had to meet several requirements including coming to the U.S. before June 2007, prior to their 16th birthday, and having never been convicted of a serious crime. The applicant had to pay $495 to apply for DACA status, and renew their status every two years. In return, DACA applicants - unless they commit a serious crime - won a respite from deportation for two years, a work permit and Social Security number.

CUNY has always been welcoming for immigrants of any kind, documented or undocumented. More than a third of CUNY undergraduates were born outside the U.S. mainland, hailing from a diversity of countries including the Dominican Republic, China, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Guyana, Ecuador, Haiti and Mexico, and an estimated 5,000 CUNY students are undocumented. These students often face severe obstacles in accessing basic resources such as financial aid, in-state tuition, scholarships, governmental resources and other forms of public assistance. But these students are invaluable to our classrooms, their curiosity, tenacity and commitment to learning strengthen our colleges.

DACA has also been good for the economy. The organization American Action Forumestimated that DACA is adding $42 billion a year to the United States' GDP, and $3.4 billion to U.S. tax coffers (and both will clearly grow, since DACA recipients are in the early stages of their careers). Other estimates are much higher.

Despite the benefits of DACA, President Trump halted the program in 2017 and, in July 2021 a federal judge in Texas ruled it was unlawful. Even when President Biden temporarily reopened applications before the court decision, only a fraction of first-time applicants were approved, leaving a backlog of more than 55,000 pending applicants. Tens of thousands of young people remain in limbo, including many finishing school and eager to contribute to our economy.

This month, New York's high schools will be graduating students who have been living in the U.S. for most of their lives but arrived too late to benefit from DACA. TheDream.US, which provides college scholarships to Dreamers, found that the average age of their recipients came to this country as a 4-year-old. No democratic country punishes anyone for actions they took as a 4-year-old - except for our country and for these students. All Dreamers deserve to secure legal work in the U.S. without fear of deportation for a decision they had no choice in making.

Congress has introduced dozens of bills that would let these students remain in this country to study and work - and one day become citizens - but failed to address this ongoing problem. Conservative estimates predict that 98,000undocumented students graduate from U.S. high schools every year - almost a million in 10 years. Without congressional action, the opportunities for these young students to attend college will be drastically limited, denying them the education to work in our hospitals, schools and other industries that contribute to our economy and well-being. And we as a nation will suffer.

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